If you watched Steffon Armitage in the Heineken Cup final on Saturday, you will have witnessed yet another man-of-the-match performance and you may have been thinking how splendid it would be to see him playing for England. That’s if you are an England fan, of course.

If you watched much of the Heineken Cup last year, you could have reached the same conclusion. Indeed, on Saturday week, the day of England’s first international against New Zealand, Armitage will be playing in an invitational game for a World XV against the Springboks in Cape Town, another high-profile opportunity to say, “Hello